Barney Saltzberg is the author and illustrator of close to 50 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, Arlo Needs Glasses, Andrew Drew and Drew, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series with over one million copies in print. Additionally, he’s recorded four albums of music for children. For contact info, click HERE. For more info about setting up a visit by Barney, click HERE. Info for press can be found HERE.

Our kindergarten through fifth grade students heard inspiring presentations on creativity by author, illustrator, musician, and songwriter Barney Saltzberg on Wednesday, December 6, thanks to the efforts of librarian Moujan Walkow and Parent Council members, headed by Cynthia Sakraney and Wendy Barton. A highly creative artist, Mr. Saltzberg urged our students to build their creative muscles through observation and practice.

Saltzberg shared with students that he seeks creative inspiration in everyday items (shadows, a dog who can’t catch, orange peels, sidewalk cracks). He shares examples of this on his Instagram feed, where he posts conversions of a cauliflower head and a shadow into a sheep, a manhole cover into an alien, and a torn piece of toast into a bird, among other things. Look for his posted video where he adds characters to our beloved library. For the fourth and fifth grade students, he demonstrated how a “disappointing avocado” (disappointing because he cut it before it had fully ripened) could take on some scales to become a dinosaur, legs to become a frog, ears to become a mouse, and fins to become a fish.

Technology has enhanced Saltzberg’s ability to portray and share his creations. Barney paints his books with a graphic tablet, and he uses various programs to draw features on photos and to animate scribbles. Actual books also influence Barney Saltzberg. He urged the students to read, or rather, “eat” books. On the book front, Barney sites Harriet the Spy as a significant influence on his life. Harriet always carried a notebook, so Barney took up that habit and used his notebook to record things throughout his days.

After his presentation, the kindergarteners used squiggles to start drawings. Other students hopefully found inspiration to edit their work, a practice that Saltzberg said can take years (although he did tell the students that they cannot spend that long on their homework). While Saltzberg spoke of the many sources that inspire his work, I believe that he was an inspiration to our students, and I am grateful to those who made his visit possible.